The Holiday Warriors

This Thursday morning, I'll wake up at 5:30 a.m. to the sound of my alarm and take a bleary-eyed trip into the bathroom. I'll brush my teeth and wash my face and get ready to go to work at the hospital the same way I've done every shift for the past three and a half years. What makes this day so different, however, is that while you'll be prepping the oven for your afternoon roast, my hospital colleagues and I will be giving thanks within the walls of a surgical intensive care unit. We exist in a world where we cannot help but feel thankful, for we are not the ones confined to the bed or strapped to a ventilator or tethered to an artificial heart or kidney or lung. We work in a place where tube feeds replace turkey; where sepsis trumps stuffing; where we battle broken hearts and downtrodden spirits instead of afternoon naps and football snaps. We are the holiday warriors. The "tis-the-season" team. My fellow nurses -- along with the nursing assistants, respiratory therapists, physical and occupational therapists, physicians, advanced practice providers and others -- we are the Pilgrims of a brave new world. We are the holiday elves that push to place our patients on the good list - one that allows them to survive another wintry night and see another day. We are the whimsy workers in a winter wonderland that literally chill our patients with the intention of preserving their brains after cardiac arrest. We are the Turkey-Day brigade who places and manages balloon p...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news